Game Time - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

In this week's Game Time we decided to take a look at some of the App Store's most adorable animals. The only problem was, we kept bumping into deranged warthogs, upset elephants, and even man-eating bugs. As it turns out, the App Store is a dangerous place. Here's the spectrum of animals you'll likely to encounter.

The Good: Hamsters

Flying Hamster HD

As our history is written many things that are currently fiercely disputed will be liner notes in the history books. The best music of the last 10 years, if Kobe is really better than Jordan, even a President's legacy -- all will be left for future generations to decide. Luckily, there are a few constants that we can know with absolute certainty. The fact that the hamster from Flying Hamster HD is cuter than a baby riding a tricycle made of cotton candy is one of them.

What's cuter than a hamster hawking loogies, and spitting bees, bananas, and beer at enemies? …Well, yeah so it's not cute when you put it like that.

Flying Hamster HD is a side-scrolling aerial shooter, with an unexpectedly high difficulty level. It's hard to take too seriously when you're spitting honey at badgers, but if you're not careful the game will wipe the floor with you and your precious little hamster. Each stage is incredibly varied and ends with a grand finale -- a boss battle with large, dangerous, woodland creatures. What, you're probably thinking, could be more dangerous than a hamster with a propellor made of leaves?

The Bad: Sabertooths!

Carnivores: Ice Age

Or is it Saberteeth? Either way, the things are probably cute as kittens, but in Carnivores: Ice Age there are no kittens. Heck, as far as we can tell there aren't any baby mammals. You, the unsuspecting victim of time travel (we think?), are placed square in a strange time in the Earth's history -- it's icy, and every creature is a bloodthirsty, fully matured bag of biological terror.

Pigs aren't carnivores.

Carnivores will have you chasing the furry mammals around the snowy islands, with a pistol, rifle, or shotgun in hand. Why? Because you're a hunter. We think. That part's not explained very well. But who cares about a backstory, because Carnivores is a gorgeous first-person shooter with huge explorable islands to wander around. Though we wish there was a little more to see besides falling snow and blood thirsty hairballs, the absence of tons of visual stimulation makes finding that Woolly Mammoth you've been hunting all the more exciting.

The Ugly: The Myriad

Starfront: Collision

We thought the Zergs from StarCraft were likely the ugliest creatures in the known universe. But then Gameloft copied StarCraft and the polygonal atrocities known as the Myriad were freed upon our unwitting eyes. Technically, the Myriad are the Zerg in almost every respect. They have the same form factors, the same nasty tendency to spit at enemies, and the same freakish ability to turn into buildings. But there's something especially gross about the Myriad.

That's right. They turn into freaking spiders.

The good news is that you don't have to play as them. There's the much less interesting Human race (known for some reason as the Consortium), and then the elitist aliens known as the Wardens. If it all gives you a bit of deja vu, then the control schemes should be especially easy for you to figure out. Pinching is the ingenious way to select a group of units, and simply tapping anywhere on the screen directs them where to run. For any fans of StarCraft, the controls, characters, and gameplay should feel instantly recognizable. For everyone else, it'll take a bit more legwork -- a small price to play a SC-style RTS on your iPhone.

So what's the ugliest animal you've encountered in the App Store? What about the most dangerous? Make sure to sound off in the comments with your iPhone petting zoo nightmares.